In a previous post, Mass Producing Intelligence, I talked about working in the field of artificial intelligence (A.I.) and how I think it’s essentially a gateway to the mass production of intelligence. In the introduction of that entry, I mentioned that all scientific fields had one thing in common: Intelligence. Eli posted a good question, asking me to elaborate on that statement.
First, let’s clarify the concept of science: It’s a method, a way of thinking and acting. Investigating the physical world systematically to answer questions. The fields of science, no matter how distinct, are all concerned with explaining parts of the same physical universe.

Intelligence is the Ultimate Tool of Science

To explain the parts of the Universe, we create and use many tools (math, devices, etc.). But to actually apply these tools we need intelligence. Just as we need intelligence to realize the need for them, to create them or to understand the information they provide us with. Scientific fields can have different subgoals and methods, but it’s always human intellect that creates them and the tools, does the research, solves the problems and makes the discoveries. Intelligence is the root and ultimate tool of science.

AI: Replicating Intelligence, the Ultimate Tool Manufactured

How artificial intelligence fits into this picture is that when we create A.I., we are (in essence) accomplishing two things:

Gaining a better understanding of what intelligence is and how it works.

Creating the ultimate tool to help solve problems.

The closer we get to replicating human intelligence in machines, the more intellectual power we’re producing. This power can be harvested and consequently applied to all the scientific fields. Enabling machines to do research, analyze data, extract meaningful information and compel new discoveries. The global brain of human minds is no match for the seas of data being produced in this era of technological ascent; A.I. is a perfect remedy.

By working on A.I., all the fields of science benefit because we’re increasing the presence of intelligence. Not via procreation — but production. Machines can be engineered, extended, improved upon, replicated, repaired, mass produced and packaged.

Perhaps A.I. really is the answer to the current problem of the ‘signal to noise’ ratio on the web – millions of users are producing content everyday on the internet, and most of it never reaches the people it meant for … lost in the size of the net.

And – you just made me realize – Google is doing the best it can, with A.I. right now! Whoah – never really thought about the science that goes into serving us the most relevant web pages in search.

Yeah, that’s exactly what search engines are dealing with. And similarly, that’s a big part of what’s been dubbed Web 3.0: Adding common sense to the web. Enabling machines to better understand the meaning of data and data relationships (see semantic web), so that they can process information more intelligently.